I don’t know how often this occurs, but there is a not infrequent situation where a man is sure about wanting sex and may wax and wane eloquently about a wondrous future filled with romantic vacations to a woman he is pursuing in order to land her in bed. Once he has her, those promises can often fade and if the woman asks about his fulfilling what he promised, he accuses her of pressuring him and tells her to stop nagging. To compound the problem there are few things that take away a man’s desire to spend his life with a woman than her pressuring him to make good on what he promised.

However even as he resists and can become petulant about it, he may nevertheless be building an emotional dependency on her underneath. If she reaches the point, especially after her friends and family insist that he is toying with her, of delivering an ultimatum of either get engaged/married or break up and if it is not a bluff, the fear of losing her can cause that man to accede to her insistence for all the wrong reasons — not wanting to lose her vs. wanting to be with her.

Also not infrequently if the man under pressure agrees to the marriage, but feels he didn’t choose it, he can respond by withholding love and attention. And if the woman is oblivious as she becomes consumed with planning the wedding with her friends and family while the man feels like a unengaged Ken doll onlooker, he can further react by becoming even less loving.

Sadly I have seen such a switching off of desire last for decades in the man as a reaction to feeling he didn’t choose the marriage but was forced even as the couple produces children, buys a homes, etc.

Here is the real rub.  One of the worst feelings a woman can have is to feel coldness, contempt or nothing in the part of her where she is supposed to feel warmth.  Women have confided in me that a woman without warmth is not a woman (alternatively men have confided in me that a man without courage is not a man).  When men withdraw or withhold caring towards a woman or worse act sullen, petulant or complaining (since they have lost that loving feeling), it can cause a woman to lose her warm feelings towards that man.  And underneath the anger a woman may feel toward a non-loving or unloving man is an unconscious fear that she has lost her warmth, is no longer a woman and is trapped.

What’s a woman to do to prevent this very sad fate?

At any given moment when the man’s desire is waning you can tell him he is “free to leave” and that you don’t want to be with him unless he wants to be with you. Ironically, if you do that, the men worth keeping may then rediscover their desire. In fact a woman who is wise enough to never let the man feel so sure of her may have a man always desiring her. We call this being coy and it is not game playing, but rather knowing that a man feels better when he is pursuing a prize than when he is being told to do something.

What’s a man to do if he has lost that loving feeling because she “pressured” him to get married?

Realize that she didn’t put a gun to your head.  You’re the one who made the promises that you didn’t intend on keeping or did until you realized that it meant living up to a lot of responsibilities, which may have intimidated you.  Instead of pulling away and emotionally disengaging for  years or even the entirety of your marriage, tell your girl friend/fiance that the fear of not living up to those responsibilities mixed with her excitement about getting married and planning the wedding is very upsetting.  That will hopefully give her the opportunity to say to you, “I understand that and I think we can figure out and meet those responsibilities together. If you don’t want to get married or if you can’t decide until that fear goes away, I don’t think it will.  However I think every couple and every husband to be goes through this, but at least we’re talking about it.”  Just that understanding can cause you to realize why you love and want to marry to her.

I remember years ago a very touching scene when a woman was by the bed of her dying husband after being married for sixty years. In an unforgettable moment she whispered to him, “I’ve been lying to you for over sixty years.”

Half conscious he looked confused and said, “What?” whereupon she said, “Yes, for our entire life together, I’ve been mad about you and sexually crazy about you, but I never told you, because I knew you liked the chase.”

At that point he reached over to her and smiled weakly and said, “That’s one of the things I loved you for.”

- Mark Goulston, M.D.

The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again …and Stay There (Perigee, $15.95)

How often do you and your partner put a smile on each other’s face that touched each other’s heart? If that happens almost always, congratulations, go out in the world and serve as a role model and beacon of hope to other less happy couples.  If that doesn’t happen take the following quiz and then learn how to bring it back.

To find out what your scoring means and how to use this quiz with your partner to bring back liking (and adoring) each other that you once felt contact drgoulston@gmail.com.

And… if you like each other, but your sex life is kaput check out: Are You More Roommates than Lovers?

Yeller – someone who absolutely refuses to take, “No,” for an answer and woe be it to those who attempt to say it to them.

Why is it that a complainer will rarely complain to another complainer? First, complainers think that if they complain to another complainer that that other person will just complain or make an excuse about why they can’t help. Second, complainers perceive themselves as weak and perceive other complainers as weak and therefore don’t see that another complainer has anything to give them.

Instead complainers will usually complain to yellers. Why? Because complainers perceive yellers to be strong, powerful and having something to give them. They also believe that that strong person will either intervene on the complainer’s behalf, take care of something for them or let the complainer off the hook. The real problem that complainers don’t realize is that yellers are often not strong, they’re just angry.

What’s the solution for you in dealing with a complainer or yeller? First, don’t expect them not to react in a negative way (by complaining or yelling) if you want something from them that they don’t want to do or give. Second, after they complain or yell at you for something, calmly pause for at least ten seconds. That will drive them crazy, but rather than being frightened by them, see that as a temper tantrum at not being able to manipulate you.

If they do escalate and complain or yell louder about why you’re saying nothing respond by saying, “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re so frustrated about and what we and most likely you can do to make the situation better.”

There is a good chance they won’t like your saying “we” or “you” to them, when what they really wanted was for you to take care of the situation by yourself. If that is the case, they may become even more upset. But if you notice carefully, you will begin to see that they are more frustrated than angry, because they know you have caught them, refused to be manipulated and they don’t have a back up plan.

If they do throw the situation back at you to fix or say they can’t do anything to make their problem better, calmly respond, “Sorry to hear that, because I certainly don’t have any room on my plate to take care of this for you, so we’ll either have to figure out a way for you to handle it or you will have to figure that out by yourself and then handle it on your own.”

If they continue to dig their heels in or even attack you, calmly respond, “Look, I’m sorry you feel that way, but it doesn’t change anything. Either we figure out what you need to do to make it better or you will need to figure it out and handle it on your own.”

If they still refuse to cooperate with that (i.e. their last ditch effort to manipulate you) and even threaten to do something harmful to themselves, tell them, “Well I hope you won’t do that.” If they threaten to do something to someone or something else, say, “If that’s the case I’ll have to deal with that appropriately.” If they threaten to do nothing, say, “If you do nothing when it is your responsibility and it blows up or turns negative, you’ll have to deal with it or pay the consequences. I’m sorry if you don’t like that, but it’s what all of us have to do when we are responsible for something.”

By the way, you might wonder why yellers don’t yell at other yellers. It occasionally does happen as shown in the iconic movie, The War of the Roses, but as that film demonstrates, left unchecked yelling vs. yelling begets violence and sometimes murder.

Oprah: For all those couples out there who are having problems or going the first time around and want to avoid some of the disasters that we’ve heard about today, what’s the number one thing they can do today to turn things around in their relationship?

Dr. Mark: Be yourself as soon as possible in the relationship and get your spouse to be themselves, because why would you want to be with anyone who doesn’t like you for you?

Oprah: Yeah (surprised), and oy, we like that!

Watch video/audio clip for more

Here’s the rap on the frequent rifts between emotionally based and logically based partners after the yelling and defensiveness have settled into a coldness that is like ice (and the emotional person is just as likely to be a man and the logical person is just as likely to be a woman).

Both partners are hesitant to enter into the nobody’s land between them that is a combination of both a no-man’s and no-woman’s land created by the animosity between them.  Neither wants to engage someone who is much more likely to bare their teeth or just shut down, than bare their neck regarding the hurt that each feels under the anger they show on the surface (that may be worth reading again and reacting to in your comments).

Before the logical/analytical partner steps into the gap, what the other person says needs to make sense.  Before the emotional/feeling partner enters it, what the other person says need to feel right.  And pure logic feels cold to an emotional person, just as pure emotionality feels “out of control” and crazy to the a logical person.

The truth is that each person is coming from a place of deep hurt and of self-protection much more than an assault on the other.  The proof of this is that at the height of the heated debate between the two, each frequently perceives that the other person is on the attack and saying, “I’m right and you’re wrong.”  More often than not, what each is actually feeling underneath that reaction is, “Damn it! I’m not always wrong!”

Understanding and identifying the hurt that lies within the hatefulness outside is the first step in bridging the gap and getting not just back to tolerating each other, but to liking each other.

The way to do that is calm yourself down and ask yourself, “What’s it like for the other person right now?”  You will usually realize that they don’t like the situation any more than you do and it’s unlikely that they really enjoy disliking you.  More likely is that they are reacting to feeling that you dislike them.

After you have become calmer and more centered, ask the other: “Do you hate this as much as I do and do you feel as powerless to turn it around as I do?”  Hopefully they will agree.

At that point say to them, “I’m not telling you that I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m not telling you that you’re crazy and stupid (to the emotional partner) or cold and clueless (to the logical partner).  What I’m saying is that when you react the way you just did (by becoming emotional or cold and shut down), I feel very hurt and before I let myself know it or show that to you, I turn it into anger and attack (or shut down).  What I am trying to say is that I really do hate it when we get into this place and that I don’t think you like it either.  But I don’t know how to stop it or even keep from making it worse and have no clue how to turn it around.  Do you have any idea what we can do when we get to this place?”

If you can say that in a calm, respectful and humble tone without even a hint of anger, blaming, whining or complaining (which is why you need to let go of your angry reactivity beforehand and take as many deep breaths as you need to become centered), you’re likely to get the response my patient received from his partner when he said the above.

She said, “I don’t know how to stop it or turn it around either, but you’re off to a good start.”

If the above scenario speaks to you, you can find additional resources by checking out: The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship: How to Fall in Love Again… and Stay There (Perigee, $14.95) with special pricing at amazon.com and “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (Amacom, $24.95) and catch some tips that Oprah seemed to like below:

If the above scenario doesn’t speak to you, there is a likelihood that: a) you’d rather be right than make it better (see someone just like that on Dr. Mark on Montel below); b) you have a pretty wide unforgiving streak that you learned from a parent who is even more unforgiving than you; c) if you don’t change, you are not relationship material.

Usable Insight: If you are angry at your spouse and can’t resist saying something hostile, start talking from the hate you feel on the surface, but don’t stop talking until you are talking from the hurt underneath.

I received many grateful emails regarding my last Usable Insight: The Learned Person.  Several people said that what got to them most was not just seven specific qualities they could aspire to, but also the realization of how the opposite of these qualities could cause you to be a “golem.”  One person told me that perhaps a simpler word for having those negative qualities was being a “taker.” That response as well as rereading the chapter, “Steer Clear of Toxic People” in my new book, “Just Listen” Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone (AMACOM, $24.95) caused me to realize that before you can “Steer clear of toxic people” or “Just say, ‘No,’ to takers,” it would be helpful to recognize them before they take from you.

How do you recognize takers? The best way to recognize a taker is to make the most of the hindsight you will beat yourself up with, the next time you’re taken from by one of them.

Think of the last time this happened to you.  Was it when you paid money to someone for something you never received?  Was it when you gave someone who hurt you for the tenth time, an eleventh chance to do it again, and then they did?  Was it when you gave your employee a second chance to get their work in on time, and they again failed to do so?  Was it when you gave your boy friend or girl friend another chance to meet you on time and again they were thirty minutes late? Or was it when you truly believed that “sure fire” guaranteed offer that sounded too-good-to-be-true that turned out too good to be true?

Where do you find takers?  Takers cross all socioeconomic, age, gender, ethnic, personal, occupational, and familial boundaries.  There are taker husbands and taker wives; taker parents and taker children; taker brothers and taker sisters; taker friends and taker foes; taker neighbors and taker strangers; taker bosses and taker employees; taker young and taker old; taker Caucasians and taker African Americans; taker Asians and taker Europeans; taker New Yorkers and taker Californians; taker intellectuals and taker anti-intellectuals and taker writers and taker readers.  (Fortunately, givers also cross all these boundaries, but more about that later).

What are some of the qualities present in most takers?

25 Warning Signals That You’re Dealing With a TAKER

1. They act entitled to whatever they’re taking from you.
2. They treat you as an extension of themselves.
3. When they hurt or disappoint you they don’t experience guilt, shame or remorse.
4. They won’t apologize to you, but will expect you to apologize to them.
5. Their wish is your command, and if you don’t comply, you don’t love them.
6. They believe their problems are someone else’s fault.
7. They believe that you and everyone else are in this world to make them happy.
8. When you give to them, they don’t feel compelled to say thank you or be grateful.
9. If they feel taken from by you, they become outraged and entitled to become enraged.
10. They don’t regret taking from you, but they regret not taking even more from you.
11. They need to have the last word in conversations.
12. They don’t take turns well.
13. They are impatient and hate to wait.
14. They interrupt or butt into conversations.
15. They act as if they are always right.
16. They act as if they are never wrong.
17. When they’re frustrated, they feel justified in doing anything to make themselves feel better.
18. They won’t tell you specifically what you are doing wrong or ask you directly for what they need— they expect you to read their minds.
19. They are stubborn and you may confuse their stubbornness for strength and be attracted to them because of it.
20. They aren’t motivated to know, care or do anything unless it gets them something.
21. They are quick to ridicule or laugh at others, but have little ability to laugh at themselves or tolerate being laughed at.
22. They either cannot or will not put themselves in another person’s shoes.
23. They hold everyone else accountable, but evade being held accountable.
24. They talk much more than they listen.
25. They’ll expect a second, third and fourth chance from you when they hurt you; but they won’t give you a second chance when you hurt them.

This list can be discouraging.  You may be hard pressed to think of many people who don’t show at least some of these characteristics.  More upsetting is that you will probably find yourself owning up to at least a few of these qualities.  Take a breather now if this list is too upsetting, but come back later if in your heart, you know it’s true. Don’t become paranoid, but do become mindful of people with these qualities and just say, “No,” before you become involved with them.

Spread the Word

]]> http://markgoulston.com/usable-insight-just-say-no-to-takers/feed/ 17 http://markgoulston.com/1847/ http://markgoulston.com/1847/#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:51:43 +0000 Mark http://markgoulston.com/?p=1847 Empathy is a distraction and a waste of time when aiming at a goal,
but without it, you can end up wasting your life.

“You look like hell and I don’t think it’s because you’re dying; you’ve been dying as long as I’ve known you,” I said to Max (real name withheld) the terminally ill tough movie mogul I’d been doing house calls on and with whom I had developed a no b.s. rapport.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything important in my life,” he told me.

“What?” I protested, trying to ease his mind as he closed in on the end of his life.  “Think of the hospital wing named after you, the jobs you created, the amazing films that will live on forever.”

“Don’t con a con man, especially when he’s dying,” he snapped back.  “I have all the love that money can buy and that’s all it’s worth.   I also have several ex-partners and two ex-wives I beat up on financially and a bunch of trust fund kids from three marriages, who I guess I love, but who are all selfish and irresponsible.”

“So if I continued the list of all your achievements, it wouldn’t work,” I asked.

“No, not now.  I think I just might have outsmarted myself,” Max concluded.

Now having trained FBI and police hostage negotiators and appeared on CNN and national radio stations on the day of the Columbine shootings and again on 9/11 to take calls, I am pretty quick on my feet.

“Really,” I said. “You know there are a couple of very uncomplimentary words in psychology that I’ve been thinking that might apply to you, but I didn’t think I’d get to use them given that you’re dying.  Those words are narcissist and psychopath.  And you know, you might just be getting exactly what you deserve.  You did use people for most of your life and took pleasure in doing it. You were a master manipulator.  In fact you made Citizen Kane look like a boy scout. And another thing,” I stopped when he abruptly interrupted me.

“Stop already! Okay! I get it.  You’ve made your point,” he said emphatically.

“And that point is?” I asked.

“This is not a good time for me to be asking these questions,” he said with a broad smile that indicated our rapport was still in tact despite my verbal assault.

“CORRECT! You weren’t perfect, but neither were you the most evil person on earth.  You messed up, but you did a lot of good.  Drop it already. Let’s go for pain control, morphine drip and then get out of Dodge,” I urged.

“Do I get to go out with my boots on?” Max quipped.

“Sure, it’s your movie,” I couldn’t resist having the last word.

Three weeks later Max died…with his slippers on.

Why is it that so many high achievers stink at relationships? High achievers are good at clearly selecting a goal and tenaciously staying on track until they achieve it and scattering anything that might derail them.  Other people’s feelings or being mindful of their own lack of tack (which taken together we refer to as Emotional Intelligence) would distract them.  Most high achievers are not insensitive, they are simply NOT sensitive.

To be good at a relationship, you need to listen to the other person, care enough to make the effort to understand what they are saying (i.e. “relate” to it) and then communicate back to them in a way that demonstrates you have taken into consideration what you have understood.  Not only is that off putting to a high achiever, but the “run on sentence” I just used to explain it was more than they could even pay attention to.

1. Go to bed at the same time
Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.<!–more–>

2. Cultivate common interests
After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand in hand or side by side
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode
If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a “weather” check during the day
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new a behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit…and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.

To my faithful supporters, check out my other blog venues at:

Psychology Today

Minyanville

Huffington Post

You’ll have much more chance for success in your relationships
if you leverage a future that nobody has messed up
than if you bring up an event that has already happened
and stay stuck in rehashing it to the point where everybody is frustrated

Maybe it’s me, but I see and hear more and more people talking at or over each other and less and less just listening to each other. I’ve also noticed that much of these debates — for I wouldn’t call them discussions or dialogues — center on some event that is happening and one person being in the criticising role and the other being in the defensive or hunkered down role. Something that I’ve learned from my good friend Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author of the WSJ #1 best selling book, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There and use extensively is what I call “Leveraging the Future.” It is quite magical to help all relationships. All it requires is the desire to make a situation better, willingness to focus on a solution instead of staying hopelessly stuck in a problem and most importantly, the willingness to proactively take responsibility for your actions. It usually starts with: “Going forward…” Here are some examples:

To improve your chances for success in your job:

Say to your boss: “Going forward, I would like to increase the chances of my getting a promotion or a raise at my next review. To do that what is something I should always do and something I should never do to make that happen?”

To improve your marriage:

Say to your spouse: “Going forward I want to be a better husband/wife. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me to be that to you?”

To improve your relationship with your children:

Say to your child or children: “Going forward I want to be a better mom/dad. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me to be that to you?”

To improve your relationship with your aging parent:

Say to them: “Going forward I want to be a better son/daughter. What is something I should always do and something I should never do that would help me do that?”

In a webcast that Marshall did a while back, he told the story of asking his aging mom the last question. She responded that she thought he was a great son, but that one thing that always lifted her spirits was when she would receive a card in her mailbox (don’t you remember feeling the same if you received a “care” package at overnight camp?). Marshall promptly started doing that regularly. Some time later when she was dying she told him that one of the things that made her later life happy was going down and receiving those cards. The key of course in making all of these work is the desire to make things better (vs. needing to be right) and invest in your relationships by your being the one to go first.

BTW I am a great fan and appreciative friend of Marshall’s who in addition to his many activities has some great Leading News webcasts available. I was fortunate enough to do one recently that you can hear at Leading News. I was interviewed by one of the “best listeners” I have ever met, Patricia Wheeler. Patricia is a top executive coach in her own right and you can hear her live interview at Leading News about: “Executive Transitions: What Senior Leaders Need to Know and Do” by Larry Levin on November 3, 1 PM EDT/1 AM PDT.

Also just out: Your Brain at Work by David Rock. “This is the best, the most helpful, and the brainiest book I’ve read on how the brain affects how, why and what we do and act. After reading only the first four chapters, I felt roughly 100% more efficient in organizing my work and personal life.” – Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business and University Professor, University of Southern California and author of “On Becoming a Leader.

And finally be sure to check out: Business Relationships that Last by Ed Wallace. “In Business Relationships That Last, Ed Wallace captures the immediate need for organizations and individuals to build relationships of integrity and confidence. That trust benefits every aspect of service and will help grow your business and generate superior performance.” —Stephen M. R. Covey, author of the New York Times bestseller The Speed of Trust

Try to see your partner at their worst before you get married,
because you will certainly see them at it afterwards

In the 1980’s one of my specialties and claims to fame was that I was the creator of “Recoupling Therapy”* where I helped couples that had divorced to remarry their ex- and live happily ever after.

I appeared on Oprah, Today (see mini-videoclips) in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Rebook, Los Angeles Magazine , the Los Angeles Times to discuss my work along with couples who had “recoupled.”

In actuality it was much easier to recouple a divorced couple than keep a miserable one together.

All that it required was that each partner:

1. had learned how they contributed to the problems in the marriage and took full responsibility for it.
2. had learned what they would to do different to deal with disagreements, disappointments and hurts before they deteriorated into a “scorched earth” War of the Roses and was actively using those approaches.
3. was willing to agree on a set of ground rules for managing disagreements that were more important to each of them than being right or winning.
4. made forgiveness rather than begrudging their default mode even when they couldn’t sort out the issues behind a conflict.
5. routinely expressed gratitude and appreciation to each other.
6. (and pertaining to the “”usable insight” above) realized that during the divorce they had seen and knew the other person at their worst, whereas that was something they had yet to discover in any new relationship.

What can you learn from this if you are going the first time around or even before you get married?

Don’t make a commitment to each other until you have gotten into three full scale arguments where each or both people have felt disappointed or hurt by the other to see how each person handles it. The more quickly either person goes from disappointment or hurt to anger, defensiveness, or emotional withdrawal and remains stuck there, the less that person is capable of having a relationship and the more the other person will have to walk on eggshells. Over time, doing that will have a cumulative effect, suck the vitality out of the relationship and corrode it from the inside out until it caves in on itself and dies. My advice just say “Goodbye” to such a “high maintenance” (easy to upset, difficult to please) person and if that person is you, fix it.

* I didn’t stay with that specialty because at that same time I was also involved intervening with suicidal and violent individuals, which seemed more critical at the time.  I often feel that I may have done more good had I continued with “Recoupling Therapy” given the families it would have saved and future suicides and violence it would have prevented.

ALSO Sign up and heck out the latest “Two Questions to Get Closer to Your Partner” at FREE RESOURCES

AND stayed tuned for the launch of HappierCouples.com, “coming to a relationship near you” in September and where I am thrilled to be the Chief Relationship Officer.